Wednesday, May 7, 2014

April 2014 federal polling averages

Though the volatility from poll to poll may have increased in April, on average it was a month of relative stability throughout the country. In all, four national and one Quebec poll surveyed 9,225 Canadians throughout the month of April, finding that the Liberals continue to hold a lead over the governing Conservatives.

The Liberals led for the 13th consecutive month with 34.7%, down 0.1 points from March. The party has been around 35% support for three months now.

The Conservatives trailed in second with 29.7% support, an uptick of 1.4 points and their best result since September 2013, before the Senate scandal exploded again.

The New Democrats put up their lowest numbers since December 2013, averaging 22.7%, down 2.1 points from March.

The Greens had 5.8% support, up 0.6 points, while the Bloc Québécois was down 0.4 points to 5.3%. About 1.7% of Canadians said they would vote for another party.

There was a fair bit of movement in British Columbia, as the Liberals dropped 3.7 points to 33.1%. They still retained the lead, though. The Conservatives, down 0.1 point to 28.7%, have been holding steady in the 29% to 30% range for four months now. The New Democrats were up 2.8 points to 25.7%, while the Greens were up 0.9 points to 10.9%.

As you can see in the chart, British Columbia has been a very close race since Justin Trudeau became Liberal leader in April 2013. Each of the three parties has led in the province for at least one month, but overall the Liberals have been in a better position. The province has certainly since its share of change, however. Prior to the 2011 election the province was a safe Conservative one. After the 2011 election, it was an NDP-Conservative race. Since Trudeau, it has been a three-way contest.

In Alberta, the Conservatives managed their highest support since November 2013 with a 1.2-point gain to 56.7%. The Liberals were up 0.5 points from March to 21.3%, while the NDP was down 0.6 points to 14.5%. The party has been in the general range of 15% to 16%, however, for four months now. The Greens were down 0.9 points to 4.9%.

The Conservatives led in Saskatchewan and Manitoba with 42.7%, down 0.6 points. The Liberals were up 1.1 points to 30.8%. The New Democrats had a very bad month in the region, polling at their lowest level since October 2009 - almost five years ago. They dropped 4.4 points to 18.2%. The Greens were up 2.2 points to 6.4%.

The Liberals have held steady in Ontario now at between 36% and 38% support for eight months, dropping 1.9 points to 36.5% in April. The Conservatives were up 2.2 points to 32.8%, while the New Democrats were down 2.2 points to 22.8%. The Greens were up 1.7 points to 6.3%.

After being one of the most volatile provinces in the country, Quebec seems to be settling in to the new state of affairs. The Liberals were up 1.3 points to 33%, marking three months with the party being between 32% and 33%. The NDP was down 1.2 points to 28.6%, marking four months in the 29% to 30% range. The Bloc was down 0.5 points to 20.2%, putting them between 20% and 22% for three months now. And most stable of all are the Conservatives, who have been between 12% and 14% for 10 months. They averaged 13.8% in April, up 0.2 points. They do seem to be on a positive trend, however. The Greens were down 0.4 points to 3.5%.

And in Atlantic Canada, the Liberals were down 0.2 points to 54.1%, against 23.5% for the Conservatives (up 2.1 points, and their best result since November 2013). The NDP was down one point to 18.4%, and has been at between 18% and 19% for three months in the region. The Greens were down 0.8 points to 3.1%, their lowest level of support in the country.

With these regional levels of support, the Conservatives would likely win about 128 seats, a gain of eight from their March standing. The Liberals dropped 10 seats to 127, while the NDP and Bloc Québécois were up one seat apiece to 77 and four, respectively. The Greens were unchanged at two seats.

The Conservatives made most of their gains in Ontario, where they were up nine seats. They were also up two in Atlantic Canada, but down three in British Columbia.

The Liberals dropped eight seats in Ontario and two each in Atlantic Canada and British Columbia. They were up two seats in Quebec, however.

The New Democrats were up five seats in B.C. but down three in Quebec and one in Ontario.

As mentioned, these averages mask the volatility in the polls we saw in April. Support for the Liberals ranged from between 30% and 39% in polls conducted during the month, while support for the Conservatives ranged between 27% and 33%. By comparison, in March the Liberals ranged between 33% and 39% and the Conservatives between 28% and 29%. It will be interesting to see whether the Conservative uptick recorded in some polls in April was a momentary thing, or something we may start to see more often. The weight of the evidence, however, points to a continued Liberal lead now stretching to more than a year.

47 comments:

Just as I thought: the timing of Angus and Ipsos polls at the middle of the month clearly shows a sharp Conservative bump in "vote-rich" Ontario correlating directly to Jim Flaherty's funeral and extremely generous press reports about his competence as a fiscal manager and a family man. It represented a momentary lapse of reason brought on by nostalgia.

The subsequent Forum and Ekos in the latter part of the month show a return to the pattern of eroding support for the Conservatives and steady support for the Trudeau Liberals as the safe alternative to the Conservatives. With the Auditor General's slamming of the government for mismanaging pensions this week, it's easy to anticipate a continued softening of Conservative support from Blue Tories in Ontario.

It shows too how soft that support is for the Liberals if a bit of Ontario nostalgia can shake it up. It must lend some hope to both the NDP and Conservatives.

I love the monthly composites, but this shows that they are not perfect. They don't necessary catch the full effects of events like the Flaherty funeral (although it's clear that they do show up in the monthly average). I suspect that in the 2 mid-April polls, Conservatives would have been in majority territory, whereas the two late April polls would have shown results closer to those of March.

One might argue that blips that last only a week or two are not very important, and that the monthly averages iron those out. This is why I bank on the monthly averages chart as my tracking chart for the polls, rather than something that wobbles back and forth with each individual survey.

I still don't think anyone can properly attribute changes in polling due to single event issues unless they are explicitly expressed within the poll. What I mean by that is a persons desire to vote for any one party is likely due to a composite of factors, some longer lasting in peoples minds than others.

So saying 2 polls this month had higher than "normal" levels of conservative support are due to a funeral of Jim Flaherty's funeral is an assumption. It could also be due to a full moon taken during the polling period. Both events would have a strong correlation but without any specific data they are just assumptions.

Going back and looking at the polls, there are always going to be a couple that break away from the longer term trend. Error in the polling numbers can easily explain a lot of them rather any specific event. Though that is not to mean that events do not change voters choices, you can easily come up with a list of possible reasons positive or negative as to why a party may be up or down just have no data to support any of it.

In my own, newly-338-ridings-adapted simulator (mind you, some of those new ridings are very approximate, I can't start looking at each ballot to really create them, so I go by general area covered), I get:

The CPC's advantage, I would say, is that it is not wasting votes in Québec, which has more weight than Alberta in terms of seats and voters. Even with a mere 14%, they gain 7 seats. The LPC, on the other hand, is gaining nothing out it's 21% in Alberta, which is a major waste of votes. The fact they are also leading in voting intentions in Québec and BC but don't get the most seat share is also a cause for concern.

As for your scenario, I generally use provincial numbers, but I'll just adapt the April numbers with uniform swing to, nationally, give this:

35% CPC35% LPC21% NDP4,5% GPC4,5% BQ (meaning 19,5% in Québec)

The results would become:

150 CPC114 LPC65 NDP8 BQ1 GPC

It's not majority territory, but it's not all that far either if a few close calls go the Tories' way. In this scenario, the problem for the CPC is that they make significant gains on the LPC in Ontario and British Colombia, but the LPC makes significant gains on the NDP in Québec. With a strong third party, majority becomes hard to achieve, especially if you don't hold a lead in voting intentions.

I think the Harper would need a real blunder by the Liberals to hang onto power in the next federal election. It seems they (Harper) have gone out of their way to alienate those in the middle right area of the political spectrum.

At this point I think Hudak has the same kind of problem. People really want to throw out the Liberals along with their sky high electricity bills, which drive business from the province. The trouble is that we don't want to see a Hudak government which would be, IMO, to the right of the Harris governments. If only John Tory hadn't messed up with promise of funding for religious schools.

Conservative policies have been rather generous to the middle class and the centre-right population on the political spectrum. I suppose if one thinks tax cuts or a focus on jobs alienate the "middle right" of the political spectrum you may have a point but, generally I think the middle right agrees with tax cuts and a economic focus towards governing.

Even the spat with the Chief Justice plays towards the "middle right", people who believe in democracy instead of elite written laws born from judicial activism. Judicial activism that has prevented Senate reform!

When the election comes the Tories will have more money than any party and will have a plan and track record. At this point young Trudeau only has one badly thought out policy on the Senate that at base is elitist. He also must defend his father's constitution that in hindsight is poorly written and impossible to amend. Trudeau has no plan or policy to boost productivity or competitiveness and finances will not allow a expansion of social policy. At this point Trudeau and the Liberals do not look like a government-in-waiting and this failure more than anything else will make it difficult for them to win the next election.

Today Earl, we see young Trudeau has given a diktat that all future Liberal candidates must be pro-choice. I don't think the Liberals will gain many "middle right" voters with this policy. It also does not say much about his commitment to local democracy, there was a time when local Liberal riding organization chose their candidate now it seems candidates are selected through a top down process.

Maybe I'm left wing then, although those who know me on this board might argue otherwise. I have always voted for the CPC, though not necessarily their predecessors. My vote is very much up for grabs.

They have made three significant tax cuts that benefit me: The two GST cuts shortly after the 2006 election and the TFSA. All the piddly tax credits they have introduced have cluttered up the tax code while providing minimal tax relief. The idea of income splitting for families will benefit mostly the well off. The same amount of money could be used to reduce the first bracket rate from 15% to 14%, or to raise the personal exemption by an equivalent amount.

As for raw meet fed to the base, as in the destruction of our census, to the current fight with the Chief Justice, these are things that your average centre right voter abhors. We are a nation of laws and the keepers of those laws - the courts - must have the utmost respect of government.

I must disagree with your last statement. The Courts are not the keeper of the Law, they are the interpreter of the Law and Parliament (should be) the author of laws (increasingly this is not the case). I do not agree the average centre right voter abhors the spat with the chief justice. Whatever the motivation, MacLaughlin's attempt to contact the PM has the appearance of trying to influence a different branch of Government. At best it shows a surprising lack of judgement or understanding of politics-why did she not write a letter or have her clerk write a letter if it was merely about procedure? If she had done so there would be no room for speculation. I think a good deal of both the right and moderate right voters are skeptical of the judiciary's influence, power and ability to re-write, not merely interpret law unelected judges hold. You write the courts must have the utmost respect of Government but, shouldn't the opposite also be true? It is one thing to strike down an unjust law but, quite another for the courts to intrude with their own policy ideas. Parliament and legislatures are democratically elected the courts are not at the end of the day, subject to certain constraints, the democratic will of the people must trump judicial activism otherwise instead of a nation of laws we become a tyranny of lawyers!

On taxation, reforms that benefit you may not benefit me even if we had the same income. Hence the old adage, revenue is better than tax credits. The 15% tax bracket was in 1991 17%, I can't remember who lowered it (although my gut tells me it was Martin when finance minister). A drop of 1% really would be small savings even if you are at the top of the bracket- your tax payable would go from $5625@ 15% to $5250 @ 14%. Frankly it would be far more beneficial to expand TFSAs to $10,000 per year. If the TFSA was raised by $5,000 it would save you or I (assuming we are able to save $10,000 per year) $750 in federal tax at the 15% rate.

If income splitting ever comes to pass it will help the well off but, it will also help families where one spouse stays home. This could be especially beneficially to families who have recently had a baby or when one parent or spouse spent significant time on maternity, paternity disability leave or leave to look after an ill relative for example. I believe at some point in most peoples' lives income splitting has the ability to benefit them. The people who really lose out are the continually single!

"I must disagree with your last statement. The Courts are not the keeper of the Law, they are the interpreter of the Law and Parliament (should be) the author of laws (increasingly this is not the case). "

Um. There's a constitution too you know. Parliament isn't supreme over the constitution unless it invokes the notwithstanding clause.

Yes Parliament is supreme hence the Notwithstanding clause as you point out!

Rarely do the courts say Parliament or a Legislature has no authority to write a law, the only time this occurs is when a question of jurisdiction arises from s. 91 and 92. Even then courts have been reluctant to strike down laws that have a mitigating effect on certain populations. So a province may legislate with respect to First Nations people so long as it improves their standard of living or otherwise reduces prejudice etc...

Since, the constitution increasingly appears impossible to amend one wonders if its relevance is also declining? One wonders if, we are unable to amend the Constitution here in Canada, whether we should appeal to the Queen and the UK Parliament to rescind the Canada Act?

Fundamentally, the Courts job is not to keep the Law, if it was nothing would change. We know through various court decisions that laws are frequently subjected to changing social norms and interpretations. It is the Library of Parliament Job and the National Archives of Canada's job to literally keep the law.

Good day Daniel. Regarding your thoughts on the spats between the Prime Minister & the Chief Justice, some I agree some I don't. However I don't think the average votes, & I would assume that include the majority of centre-right voters, follow politics & this issue in particular to anywhere near the details we are unfortunately. For them, it all comes down to the matter of trust imo. & in my memory, the last poll I read regarding people's trust of different occupations, judges are ranked highest & politicians among the lowest (with lawyers & car sale person making the lowest three trusted occupation.) I don't think it would apply differently to this spat, nor would the average centre-right voters differ drastically from the poll's finding. Of course these are my speculations, but unless there's a poll that indicate Canadians think otherwise, I'm more incline to think they would side with the Chief Justice over the Prime Minister.

I take your point however, if we assume your relative rankings to be correct then the "spat" will have almost no impact on Canadian politics except among the few who follow politics closely. I would assume most of "the few" already have a political preference.

While I do not doubt the accuracy of your statement that most Canadians think highly of the judiciary an inconsistently certainly exists if judges are ranked highly but, lawyers, whom make up nearly 100% of the judiciary, are ranked near the bottom. It is inconsistent reasoning to say the least.

The reason why I use this methodology rather than treating all polls equally is because regional samples can be very small, and so more weight should be given to polls with larger samples (I'm thinking in particular of CROP's polls of 1000 Quebecers). But if that is applied at the regional level but not at the national level, the numbers won't add up.

I cringe to do this, but uhh, without any statistical analysis (from your monthly polling averages) it does look like post election the conservatives had a trend of continuously dropping support until Trudeau was elected leader of the liberals and then have been essentially flat (2% fluctuation) since then. I have heard/read Andrew Coyne argue that this 28% or so is their base which would support them no matter what, rather than anything Trudeau did specifically.

With these seat numbers I do not think anyone can say Trudeau will become PM. The Liberals and NDP are more rivals than fellow travellers. I don't see the Liberals ceding Quebec to the NDP or the NDP ceding Ontario to the Liberals. In at least 50 seats in Ontario they are each others' main competition. If they give each others' incumbents a by at the following election they will each prevent the other the possibility of forming a majority government.

There may be advantages in forming a government together but, there may be a better strategy to wait and let a unstable minority government fall on its own accord.

Also it may not be as easy to form a coalition as people think. It is not just a matter of "together we have more seats than the Tories" but, agreeing to a shared policy programme. The NDP-CCF have called for Senate abolition since its founding. Would they now in coalition with the Liberals agree to Trudeau's appointment scheme? If so they would certainly open themselves up to both internal and external criticism.

The NDP base would never forgive Mulcair for propping up the Conservatives. Harper has poisoned the well too many times for either party to not form a coalition. So long as NDP+LPC+GPC > CPC expect a non-Conservative government. If on the other hand the Bloc holds the balance of power, then things get interesting.

"The NDP-CCF have called for Senate abolition since its founding. Would they now in coalition with the Liberals agree to Trudeau's appointment scheme?"

Well they aren't going to get abolition without the consent of all 10 provinces so... lol.

It is not the NDP who would prop up the Conservatives. As Chantal Hebert noted a few weeks ago time and again we see Liberal voters are hesitant to vote NDP especially in Ontario. Would Trudeau be willing to poison the well for short term gain? Perhaps, but, the safer option is wait until polls show a Liberal majority on the horizon. The last coalition attempt sure did not endear the Liberals to Ontario voters or Canadians in general- if anything the coalition attempt gave Harper his majority.

This idea that NDP+Lib+G must equal a coalition is just bizarre. Even if the opposition hold more seats than the Conservatives why would the second party in Parliament feel obligated to form a coalition? Government formation does not work that way.

If we take Eric's numbers and assume the majority in the House vote against Mr. Harper's Throne speech the likely outcome is the GG will ask the Liberal leader to form a government. Why would Mr. Trudeau, now prime minister, dilute his power by sharing it with the NDP? If the election happens October 19th as scheduled a budget will in all likelihood be passed and Trudeau need only worry about passing a Throne speech. Mr. Mulcair who has just voted to bring down the (Conservative) Government would be hard pressed to support a Liberal minority at least on the formal occasion of a Throne speech since; defeat would almost certainly trigger another election.

Mr. Harper’s defeat in the Commons may trigger a leadership race; Tories may be in no rush to go to the polls and conceivably the Liberals could run a minority government at least until Spring 2016 and possibly longer.

In short there is no need to form a coalition government in order to defeat Harper especially for the Liberals if they win the second most seats. Only Dippers crave a coalition because they do not have the popular support to govern alone.

It will be interesting to see if the NDP changes their policy regarding the Senate. If they keep the status quo they look out of touch and unrealistic. However, I suspect, they'll keep their abolition policy since, it more likely to come to pass than their espousal of socialism.

"Mr. Mulcair who has just voted to bring down the (Conservative) Government would be hard pressed to support a Liberal minority at least on the formal occasion of a Throne speech since; defeat would almost certainly trigger another election. "

What you really mean is Mulcair would be hard pressed to NOT support a Lib minority. Because if he doesn't means another election. At the same time a formal coalition is NOT required. If a budget and Throne speech passes whoever is the Govt is safe until another "vote of confidence" occurs and that can be quite a few months !

I do not want to get into a debate on semantics but, "hard pressed to support" when the meaning is closely pursued means "closely pursued to support". In other words pressure will be exerted to support a Liberal Throne speech. I think the context pretty clear when including the second half of the sentence “since; defeat would almost certainly trigger another election”.

If one includes the adverb “not” the meaning becomes; ( Mulcair) would be under pressure to vote against the Liberal Throne speech. Even if I used the second meaning of hard pressed: “In difficulties” with “not” the sentence would read: (Mulcair) would be “in difficulties (if he did not support) the Throne Speech “. Why make the sentence negative or assume Mulcair would be in difficulties?

I am quite happy with how the paragraph turned out although if I had more time it may have turned out better.

@ Peter Are you saying that the "Flaherty flip" is hurting the CPC. The CPC got 40% last election and in this monthly average are down to 29%...... After the folks move on about how great a Finance Minister was and his tragic death the CPC will go up........29% would be a historic low since Harper united the right.

There is nothing to support any conclusion the death of Jim Flaherty had any effect on the polls at all. Why not say Harpers tough anti russian stance caused an increase in conservative polling, or Trudeau dropping the F bomb lowered the liberal and raised the conservative, maybe the moon was full and maybe the cooler temperatures on the prairies caused high liberal numbers...its all garbage to say any one of these minor things is changing the polls.

The margin of error on those Reid polls is around 3.5%. Take the latest Ipsis Reid poll and you have 33% Con, and 33% Lib...do the math and all of a sudden it could be 30% Con and 36% Lib and no one would even think there is anything out of ordinary with the poll. Forums latest poll has 30% Con and 39% Lib with 2% margin of error, that could easily be 32% Con and 37% lib and again not that shockingly different from the Ipsis Reid poll.

Evidence is a necessary evil in making reliable conclusions. Something being "obvious" to one person might not be to another, without any data to support it its still only a guess.

There is no problem with speculation, its kinda fun, the problem is the absolutism of the guesses that troubles me. Everyone is so sure their own hypothesis on why the poll numbers may have changed, even if the polls are within the margin of each others errors and even without any real data to support their opinions...

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